


The Books on our Bodies

by Nelsynoo



Series: Eleri Lavellan [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: But I like it?, F/M, I suppose..., I was having fun with flowery language, It got a bit out of hand, i have no idea what this is, vaguely romantic nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 00:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5353604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelsynoo/pseuds/Nelsynoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleri Lavellan likes stories, likes telling them, likes listening to them. She's transfixed by Solas's stories, by the warmth in his voice. And when he leaves, he leaves behind his words inscribed on her skin.</p>
<p>I wrote this on the train home from work one night. I wonder what the other commuters thought I was doing as I sat there furiously typing into my phone (and swearing profusely - I'm not good at typing on a touchscreen keyboard).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Books on our Bodies

Life is made of stories.

They start. They end. They hit their beats. Our lives are a compendium of short stories that overlap and entwine, tangling and unraveling as people meet and people part. We write our stories as they go, revise them in our minds, build them into a grand narrative (and all lives are grand, in their own way).

Eleri is a natural storyteller. Her voice is light, a high, sweeping thing that skips over syllables, slides into sibilance. She tells her stories with her whole body. Her arms arc when she reaches the dramatic climax of her tale, hands punctuating the air with crisp gestures and voice booming to a crescendo that leaves the audience trembling in anticipation. But she’s at her best when she speaks of tragedy, of lost love and dreams left unfulfilled. Her hands go still, her body coiled tight and eyes narrow. And while her voice falls quiet, there’s so much _power_ behind her words, clipped and intense, like an incantation.

As much as she loves stories, Eleri has never been one for reading. She tried reading one of Varric’s serials once; hoped to understand what all the fuss was about. She concedes that his sentences have a pleasing rhythm to them, rich with metaphor, and his dialogue is sharp. But even a writer as renowned as Varric cannot dissuade Eleri from her firmly held belief that words do not belong in books. Words should not be trapped in leather-bound tomes, chained to pages. They should trip from the tongue, tumbling and tangling from nimble lips.

When she first meets Solas, she thinks him… odd. He is too thoughtful, too calm. There’s something cold and distant in his eyes, in the stiffness of his posture. But there’s a _warmth_ in the deep timbre of his voice, and when she listens to him speak, she can feel her skin prickle with heat. Eleri tells stories to entertain but Solas – Solas tells stories to challenge, introduce her to worlds and times she never knew existed, to thoughts and theories she’d never considered. She is fascinated with him, not just the words he speaks aloud but what he omits. 

There’s a world of unspoken words in his eyes.

She watches his mouth when he speaks, stares transfixed as his lips curl around each syllable. And when those same lips press against her skin, they tell a different story. A story of sensations, of feelings and flushes. A thousand words writ in every touch of skin. He kisses a sonnet to her collarbone, a ballad to the dip of her tattooed temple, an elegy to the junction between thigh and hip.

When he is gone, she carries his words with her, knows his feelings were real because she can see them written across her skin.

**Author's Note:**

> For more writing, drabbles, artwork and general rambling, please check out my [tumblr](http://nelsynoo.tumblr.com/).


End file.
